Negative Slow Wave Research Articles

On the lasting impact of mild traumatic brain injury on working memory: Behavioural and electrophysiological evidence

Despite increasing recognition of the significance of mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), the long-term cognitive consequences of the injury remain unclear. More sensitive measures that can detect subtle cognitive changes and consideration of individual variability are needed to properly characterise cognitive outcomes following mTBI. Here, we used complex behavioural tasks, individual differences approaches, and electrophysiology to investigate the long-term cognitive effects of a history of mTBI. In Experiment 1, participants with self-reported mTBI history (n=82) showed poorer verbal working memory performance on the operation span task compared to control participants (n=88), but there were no group differences in visual working memory, multitasking, cognitive flexibility, attentional control, visuospatial ability, or information processing speed. Individual differences analyses revealed that time since injury and presence of memory loss predicted visual working memory capacity and visuospatial ability, respectively, in those with mTBI history. In Experiment 2, participants with mTBI history (n=20) again demonstrated poorer verbal working memory on the operation span task compared to control participants (n=38), but no group differences were revealed on a visuospatial complex span task or simpler visual working memory measures. We also explored the electrophysiological indices of visual working memory using EEG during a change detection task. No differences were observed in early sensory event-related potentials (P1, N1) or the later negative slow wave associated with visual working memory capacity. Together, these findings suggest that mTBI history may be associated with a lasting, isolated disruption in the subsystem underlying verbal working memory storage. The results emphasise the importance of sensitive cognitive measures and accounting for individual variability in injury characteristics when assessing mTBI outcomes.

The effect of performance contingent reward prospects flexibly adapts to more versus less specific task goals.

In some situations, for example, when we expect to gain a reward in case of good performance, goal-driven top-down attention is particularly strong. Little is known about the task specificity of such increases of top-down attention due to environmental factors. To understand to what extent performance-contingent reward prospects can result in specific and unspecific changes in cognitive processing, we here investigate reward effects under different levels of task specification. Thirty-two participants performed a visual or an auditory discrimination task cued by two consecutive visual stimuli: First, a reward cue indicated if good performance was rewarded. Second, a task cue announced either which of the two tasks would follow (precise cue) or that both tasks would follow equally likely (imprecise cue). Reward and task cue preciseness both significantly improved performance. Moreover, the response time difference between precisely and imprecisely cued trials was significantly stronger in rewarded than in unrewarded trials. These effects were reflected in event-related potential (ERP) slow wave amplitudes: Reward and preciseness both significantly enhanced the contingent negative variation (CNV) prior to the task stimulus. In an early CNV time interval, both factors also showed an interaction. A negative slow wave prior to the task cue was also significantly enhanced for rewarded trials. This effect correlated with the reward difference in response times. These results indicate that reward prospects trigger task-specific changes in preparatory top-down attention which can flexibly adapt over time and across different task requirements. This highlights that a reward-induced increase of cognitive control can occur on different specificity levels.

Habituation of Central and Electrodermal Responses to an Auditory Two-Stimulus Oddball Paradigm.

The orienting reaction (OR) towards a new stimulus is subject to habituation, i.e., progressively attenuates with stimulus repetition. The skin conductance responses (SCRs) are known to represent a reliable measure of OR at the peripheral level. Yet, it is still a matter of debate which of the P3 subcomponents is the most likely to represent the central counterpart of the OR. The aim of the present work was to study habituation, recovery, and dishabituation phenomena intrinsic to a two-stimulus auditory oddball paradigm, one of the most-used paradigms both in research and clinic, by simultaneously recording SCRs and P3 in twenty healthy volunteers. Our findings show that the target stimulus was capable of triggering a more marked OR, as indexed by both SCRs and P3, compared to the standard stimulus, that could be due to its affective saliency and relevance for task completion; the application of temporal principal components analysis (PCA) to the P3 complex allowed us to identify several subcomponents including both early and late P3a (eP3a; lP3a), P3b, novelty P3 (nP3), and both a positive and a negative Slow Wave (+SW; -SW). Particularly, lP3a and P3b subcomponents showed a similar behavior to that observed for SCRs , suggesting them as central counterparts of OR. Finally, the P3 evoked by the first standard stimulus after the target showed a significant dishabituation phenomenon which could represent a sign of the local stimulus change. However, it did not reach a sufficient level to trigger an SCR/OR since it did not represent a salient event in the context of the task.

Neural Signals Associated with Orienting Response and Arousal Inhibition in Concealed Information Test.

Recent theory suggests that both the orienting response and arousal inhibition play roles in the effect of the concealed information test (CIT). However, the neural signatures associated with these two processes remain unclear. To address this issue, participants were motivated to either conceal or reveal crime-related stimulus during CIT while EEG was recorded. By using a temporal principal component analysis, we found that crime-related stimuli produced a larger early P3 than crime-irrelevant stimuli in both the conceal condition and reveal condition. This result suggests that this early P3 reflects an orienting response. In addition, we found that crime-related stimuli elicited a larger frontal negative slow wave than crime-irrelevant stimuli in the conceal condition but not the reveal condition, which suggests that the frontal negative slow wave reflects the arousal inhibition process. These results provide crucial evidence for understanding the neural basis underlying CIT.

Decomposing the multiple encoding benefit in visual long-term memory: Primary contributions by the number of encoding opportunities.

Although access to the seemingly infinite capacity of our visual long-term memory (VLTM) can be restricted by visual working memory (VWM) capacity at encoding and retrieval, access can be improved with repeated encoding. This leads to the multiple encoding benefit (MEB), the finding that VLTM performance improves as the number of opportunities to encode the same information increases over time. However, as the number of encoding opportunities increases, so do other factors such as the number of identical encoded VWM representations and chances to engage in successful retrieval during each opportunity. Thus, across two experiments, we disentangled the contributions of each of these factors to the MEB by having participants encode a varying number of identical objects across multiple encoding opportunities. Along with behavioural data, we also examined two established EEG correlates that track the number of maintained VWM representations, namely the posterior alpha suppression and the negative slow wave. Here, we identified that the primary mechanism behind the MEB was the number of encoding opportunities. That is, recognition memory performance was higher following an increase in the number of encoding opportunities, and this could not be attributed solely to an increase in the number of encoded VWM representations or successful retrieval. Our results thus contribute to the understanding of the fundamental mechanisms behind the influence of VWM on VLTM encoding.

Electrophysiological hallmarks for event relations and event roles in working memory.

The ability to maintain events (i.e., interactions between/among objects) in working memory is crucial for our everyday cognition, yet the format of this representation is poorly understood. The current ERP study was designed to answer two questions: How is maintaining events (e.g., the tiger hit the lion) neurally different from maintaining item coordinations (e.g., the tiger and the lion)? That is, how is the event relation (present in events but not coordinations) represented? And how is the agent, or initiator of the event encoded differently from the patient, or receiver of the event during maintenance? We used a novel picture-sentence match-across-delay approach in which the working memory representation was "pinged" during the delay, replicated across two ERP experiments with Chinese and English materials. We found that maintenance of events elicited a long-lasting late sustained difference in posterior-occipital electrodes relative to non-events. This effect resembled the negative slow wave reported in previous studies of working memory, suggesting that the maintenance of events in working memory may impose a higher cost compared to coordinations. Although we did not observe significant ERP differences associated with pinging the agent vs. the patient during the delay, we did find that the ping appeared to dampen the ongoing sustained difference, suggesting a shift from sustained activity to activity silent mechanisms. These results suggest a new method by which ERPs can be used to elucidate the format of neural representation for events in working memory.

Dynamic alpha power modulations and slow negative potentials track natural shifts of spatio-temporal attention.

Alpha power modulations and slow negative potentials have previously been associated with anticipatory processes in spatial and temporal top-down attention. In typical experimental designs, however, neural responses triggered by transient stimulus onsets can interfere with attention-driven activity patterns and our interpretation of such. Here, we investigated these signatures of spatio-temporal attention in a dynamic paradigm free from potentially confounding stimulus-driven activity using electroencephalography. Participants attended the cued side of a bilateral stimulus rotation and mentally counted how often one of two remembered sample orientations (i.e., the target) was displayed while ignoring the uncued side and non-target orientation. Afterwards, participants performed a delayed match-to-sample task, in which they indicated if the orientation of a probe stimulus matched the corresponding sample orientation (previously target or non-target). We observed dynamic alpha power reductions and slow negative waves around task-relevant points in space and time (i.e., onset of the target orientation in the cued hemifield) over posterior electrodes contralateral to the locus of attention. In contrast to static alpha power lateralization, these dynamic signatures correlated with subsequent memory performance (primarily detriments for matching probes of the non-target orientation), suggesting a preferential allocation of attention to task-relevant locations and time points at the expense of reduced resources and impaired performance for information outside the current focus of attention. Our findings suggest that humans can naturally and dynamically focus their attention at relevant points in space and time and that such spatio-temporal attention shifts can be reflected by dynamic alpha power modulations and slow negative potentials.

Animacy Processing in Autism: Event-Related Potentials Reflect Social Functioning Skills.

Though previous studies with autistic individuals have provided behavioral evidence of animacy perception difficulties, the spatio-temporal dynamics of animacy processing in autism remain underexplored. This study investigated how animacy is neurally encoded in autistic adults, and whether potential deficits in animacy processing have cascading deleterious effects on their social functioning skills. We employed a picture naming paradigm that recorded accuracy and response latencies to animate and inanimate pictures in young autistic adults and age- and IQ-matched healthy individuals, while also employing high-density EEG analysis to map the spatio-temporal dynamics of animacy processing. Participants' social skills were also assessed through a social comprehension task. The autistic adults exhibited lower accuracy than controls on the animate pictures of the task and also exhibited altered brain responses, including larger and smaller N100 amplitudes than controls on inanimate and animate stimuli, respectively. At late stages of processing, there were shorter slow negative wave latencies for the autistic group as compared to controls for the animate trials only. The autistic individuals' altered brain responses negatively correlated with their social difficulties. The results suggest deficits in brain responses to animacy in the autistic group, which were related to the individuals' social functioning skills.

Alternated emotional working memory in individuals with subclinical insomnia disorder: An electrophysiological study

The deleterious effects of sleep loss on sleep-dependent memory and emotional function have been documented in the current literature. Yet, the effects of insomnia-induced chronic sleep disturbance on emotional short-term memory have been scarcely investigated. Twenty-one participants with subclinical insomnia disorder (SID) and 20 healthy participants (healthy control, HC) performed a delayed recognition task of emotional faces, and event-related potentials (ERPs) involved in memory encoding, retention, and retrieval of faces across different emotional valences were assessed. Behavioral findings revealed that participants in the SID group had a larger response bias, being more likely to perceive negative faces as “old” faces presented in the retrieval phase than those in the HC group. ERP findings revealed that emotional faces in the SID vs. HC group induced significantly smaller P1 and late P3b and larger N170 amplitudes in the encoding phase and smaller negative slow wave (NSW) in the retention phase. In retrieval phase, the interaction between Sleep group and Valence were revealed for P1 and early P3b amplitudes, but no group differences were found after Bonferroni correction. These findings suggested that insomnia induced chronic sleep disturbance would influence performance on emotional working memory and induced processing phase specific regulation of neurophysiology in emotional working memory regardless of valence.

Use of Event-Related Potentials to Assess Visual–Auditory Multisensory Information in the Decision-Making Processes Related to Fast-Consuming Behavior

People are accustomed to using mobile phones to purchase products online. Previous studies identified brain activities associated with online buying decisions but did not assess mismatch negativity (MMN), P300 (P3a and P3b), and slow waves. We applied visual animation and sound effects to test visual–auditory multisensory concepts in product promotion strategies. Event-related potential (ERP) responses from 53 participants were analyzed to help design sound effects based on MMN, P300, and slow waves. We designed five short visual–auditory animation videos: visual animation sound effect (VASE), VA sound beep (VASB), visual standard sound beep (VSSB), visual animation–no sound (VANS), and visual standard–no sound (VSNS). These five apps were used to test how matched and unmatched multisensory user experience (UX) influences online shopping decisions. We also used Arrow’s impossibility theorem to design the purchasing experiment. VASE evoked MMN (cluster p = 0.0184) compared with VSSB. VASE evoked the strongest P300 (P3a and P3b) responses (cluster p = 1 × 10−5), and VASB evoked more negative slow wave amplitudes (cluster p = 1.7 × 10−4) compared with VASE. Participants buy products unconsciously via most VASE and VANS mobile apps compared with via VASB and VSNS. Our findings suggest that sensory memory from multisensory UX can promote product consumption in mobile phone shopping interfaces. This study’s testing of memory and attention from MMN, P300, and slow waves makes a novel contribution to the marketing discipline. The implications can motivate researchers to apply ERP to analyze the multisensory concept in future interdisciplinary research.

Adiposity and insulin resistance moderate the links between neuroelectrophysiology and working and episodic memory functions in young adult males but not females

IntroductionObesity and insulin resistance negatively influence neural activity and cognitive function, but electrophysiological mechanisms underlying these interrelationships remain unclear. This study investigated whether adiposity and insulin resistance moderated neural activity and underlying cognitive functions in young adults. MethodsReal-time electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded in 38 lean (n = 12) and obese (n = 26) young adults with (n = 15) and without (n = 23) insulin resistance (18–38 years, 55.3% female) as participants completed three neurocognitive tasks in working memory (Operation Span), inhibitory control (Stroop), and episodic memory (Visual Association Test). Body fat percentage was quantified by a dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry scan (DEXA/DXA). Fasting serum insulin and glucose were quantified to calculate Homeostatic Model Assessment for Insulin Resistance (HOMA-IR) values, for which a higher value indicates more insulin resistance. Hierarchical moderated regression analysis tested these interrelationships. ResultsIn males, greater frontal negative slow wave (fNSW) and positive slow wave (PSW) amplitudes were linked to higher working memory accuracy in participants with low, but not high, body fat percentage and HOMA-IR levels. In contrast, body fat percentage and HOMA-IR did not moderate these associations in females. Furthermore, body fat percentage and HOMA-IR values moderated the relationship between greater fNSW amplitudes and better episodic memory accuracy in males, but not females. Finally, body fat percentage and insulin resistance did not moderate the link between neural activity and inhibitory control for either sex. ConclusionYoung adult males, but not females, with higher body adiposity and insulin resistance showed reduced neural activity and worse underlying working and episodic memory functions.

Of ugly gains and happy losses: An event-related potential study of interactions of the intrinsic and acquired valence of emotional pictures

During the last decades, event-related potential research on the processing of intrinsic and acquired valence has made great progress, but the two dimensions rarely varied simultaneously. Only that way, however, can we investigate whether the acquisition of extrinsic valence varies with intrinsic valence and whether intrinsic and acquired valence share the same brain mechanisms. Forty-five participants performed associative learning of gains and losses, using pictures varying on intrinsic valence (positive, negative) and outcome (90 % gain, 50 %/50 %, 90 % loss). 64-channel EEG was recorded. During acquisition, one picture from each valence/outcome combination was repeatedly presented, followed by abstract outcome information (+10 ct, −10 ct) at the predefined probability. In the test phase, participants pressed buttons to earn the real gains and avoid the real losses associated with the pictures. Here, effects of outcome and/or its congruence with intrinsic valence were observed for RT, error rate, frontal theta power, posterior P2, P300, and LPP. Moreover, outcome systematically affected post-test valence and arousal ratings. During acquisition, a contingency effect (90 % > 50 %) on amplitude of a frontal negative slow wave accompanied the progress of learning, independently of outcome, valence, and congruence. The relative absence of outcome effects during acquisition suggests “cold” semantic rather than genuinely affective processing of gains and losses. However, with real gains and losses in the test phase, “hot” affective processing took place, and outcome and its congruence with intrinsic valence influenced behavior and neural processing. Finally, the data suggest both shared and distinct brain mechanisms of intrinsic and acquired valence.

Neuromarketing as a scale validation tool: Understanding individual differences based on the style of processing scale in affective judgements

AbstractThis paper revisits a well‐cited and widely applied consumer scale, Style of Processing (SOP) (Childers et al., Journal of Consumer Research, 1985, 12, 125), that has been used to investigate individual differences in processing visual versus verbal information in marketing. The scale has advanced knowledge in fields related to marketing communications, product development, psychology, advertising, education and learning theories, shedding light on our understanding of consumer psychology related to persuasion, comprehension, memory, and other consumer cognitive processes involving information. In a research dialog that took place in 2008, a need for further SOP validation was suggested using a neuromarketing approach. We took this call forward and conducted an event‐related‐potential (ERP) experimental research study using electroencephalogram (EEG) to validate the SOP scale, focusing on differential affective processing between verbalizers and visualizers. We not only demonstrate how neuromarketing tools can be utilized to provide evidence for scale validity, providing advantages over self‐reported measures; but more importantly, address issues related to understanding differential fluency effects that exist between visualizers and verbalizers. Behavioral data revealed varying reaction times to emotional stimuli of a pictorial nature. We further identify two ERP components in our data, early left anterior negativity (ELAN) and late negative slow wave (LNSW), that differentiate individual processing fluency in affective versus evaluative‐based judgements. Findings confirmed the construct validity of the SOP scale and enhance our understanding of individual differences in emotional processing of pictorial information.

Investigating mechanism of the effect of emotional facial expressions on attentional processing by data clustering approach

To explore the mechanism of the effect of emotional facial expression on attentional process, time course and topographic map of Electroencephalographic activities affected by emotional stimuli were investigated. Emotional Stroop task was used to collect 64-channel event-related potentials (ERP) in nonclinical participants, and data clustering was applied to find significant effect of sad and happy facial expression on ERP. Several significant ERP clusters were found in the sad and happy conditions respectively. In the sad condition, the decreased N170 in the bilateral parietooccipital areas, the increased P3 in the right centroparietal region and the increased negative deflection between 600 and 650 ms in the prefrontal regions were observed, these alterations reflected inhibited perceptual processing of sad facial expression, and increased activations of the orienting network and the executive control network in attentional system, respectively. In the happy condition, increased negative slow wave was found in the left centroparietal region indicating strengthened awareness and readiness for successive trials. Importantly, nonpathological attentional bias to sad facial expression in nonclinical participants was associated with inhibited perceptual processing and increased activations of the orienting and executive control networks. It provides the basis for better understanding and application of attentional bias in psychiatric clinical utilization.

Effect of Acute Psychological Stress on Speed Perception: An Event-Related Potential Study

The present study tested the intrinsic ERP features of the effects of acute psychological stress on speed perception. A mental arithmetic task was used to induce acute psychological stress, and the light spot task was used to evaluate speed perception. Compared with judgments in the constant speed and uniform acceleration motion, judgments in the uniform deceleration motion were made more quickly and with higher accuracy; attention control was higher and peaked later; and there was longer N2 peak latency, larger N2 peak amplitude, and lower mean amplitude of the late negative slow wave (SW). Under stress, the reaction time was significantly shorter. The N2 peak amplitude and SW mean amplitude were significantly higher, attention control was higher and appeared earlier, and there was a greater investment of cognitive resources. The type of movement and evoked stress also interacted to predict behavioral and ERP measures. Under acute stress, judgments made in the uniform deceleration motion condition elicited lower N2 peak latency, higher attention control, and later peak attention. The results suggest that judgments of the speed of decelerating motion require a lower investment of cognitive resources than judgments of other kinds of motion, especially under acute stress. These findings are best interpreted in terms of the interaction of arousal and attention.

Neural signatures for the n-back task with different loads: An event-related potential study

The n-back task is widely used in working memory (WM) research. However, it remains unclear how the electrophysiological correlates of WM processes, the P2, N2, P300, and negative slow wave (NSW), are affected by differences in load. Specifically, while previous work has examined the P300, less attention has been paid to the other components assessing the load of the n-back paradigm. The present study aims to investigate whether other sub-processes in WM (such as inhibitory control) are as sensitive to n-back load changes as the update process by observing changes in the above event-related potential (ERP) components. The results showed poorer behavioral performance with increasing WM load. Greater NSW and smaller P300 amplitudes were elicited by n-back task with a higher load compared to that with lower load. In contrast, there was no significant effect of the n-back load on the amplitudes of P2 and N2. These findings suggest that the updating process and the maintenance process are sensitive to the n-back load change. Therefore, changes in the updating and maintenance processes should be considered when using the n-back task to manipulate the WM load in experiments. The present study may contribute to the understanding of the complexity of WM loads. Additionally, a theoretical basis for follow-up research to explore ways of improving WM performance with high load is provided.

Modulation of similarity on the distraction resistance of visual working memory representation.

Controversy exists regarding the distraction resistance of priority items in visual working memory (VWM). The protection account proposes that high-priority items resist distraction more than low-priority items, while the vulnerability account proposes that distractors impair high-priority items more. We proposed another available resource threshold account: distraction will not impair items if available resources exceed their threshold needed for sufficient processing. Using a change-detection paradigm, we manipulated item priority by color similarity and inserted distractors during VWM retention. We investigated the effect of similarity on distraction resistance of relevant (color) and irrelevant (shape) feature representations (Experiments 1-2), and the neural mechanism of this effect using event-related potentials (ERPs; Experiment 3). Behavioral results showed distractors impaired the accuracy of dissimilar items when relevant features were memorized and of similar items when irrelevant features were memorized under simultaneous presentation of similar and dissimilar items. Moreover, distractors impaired the accuracy of dissimilar items when relevant features were memorized and of both similar and dissimilar items when irrelevant features were memorized under separate presentation of items. ERP results showed a smaller negative slow wave and P2 but larger N2 under the similar condition. Similarity protected relevant features of similar items against distraction by reducing memory load, decreasing attentional resources allocated to distractors, and strengthening inhibition of distractors. However, similarity did not protect irrelevant features of similar items. Our results support the available resource threshold account, suggesting that VWM is a flexible and intelligent system despite its limited capacity.

EEG correlates of impaired anticipation processes in the early stages of schizophrenia

IntroductionAn impairment of anticipation processes is considered as a common deficiency in schizophrenia (Kveraga et al., 2007), however its neural mechanisms remain poorly understood.ObjectivesThe aim of the study was to analyze CNV-like slow negative waves during the pre-target stimuli waiting period in patients with the first episode of the disease.Methods32-channels EEGs during “Go / No go delay” saccadic paradigm have been recorded in 16 young male patients with illness duration less than 2 years and 18 age and sex matched healthy subjects. The delay period between fixation and target (“Go” or “No go”) visual stimulus was 2800-3000 ms. The early and late components of CNV - like slow negative waves (PMN1 and 2) have been studied in 1 sec pre-stimulus interval of delay period.ResultsAs compared to norm, the patients showed significantly increased latencies of saccades to correctly discriminated stimuli and higher percent of “errors saccades”. The amplitudes of No go-PMN1 and Go-PMN2 waves were also increased in patients. The amplitude foci of these waves were diffusely distributed in patients and mostly localized in frontal leads in norm.ConclusionsThe findings assume some violation of anticipation for action (motor or inhibitory response) processes as well as an increase of presumably cortical activation during stimulus anticipation in the “Go/No go delay” saccadic paradigm in the early stage of schizophrenia.DisclosureNo significant relationships.

Spatial Recognition Memory: Differential Brain Strategic Activation According to Sex.

Human spatial memory research has significantly progressed since the development of computerized tasks, with many studies examining sex-related performances. However, few studies explore the underlying electrophysiological correlates according to sex. In this study event-related potentials were compared between male and female participants during the performance of an allocentric spatial recognition task. Twenty-nine university students took part in the research. Results showed that while general performance was similar in both sexes, the brain of males and females displayed a differential activation. Males showed increased N200 modulation than females in the three phases of memory process (encoding, maintenance, and retrieval). Meanwhile females showed increased activation of P300 in the three phases of memory process compared to males. In addition, females exhibited more negative slow wave (NSW) activity during the encoding phase. These differences are discussed in terms of attentional control and the allocation of attentional resources during spatial processing. Our findings demonstrate that sex modulates the resources recruited to performed this spatial task.

An Investigation of a Frontal Negative Slow Wave in a Virtual Hedonic Purchase Task.

There is a connection between the frontal negative slow wave (FNSW) and the arousal inhibition in the hedonic purchase context. To calculate the FNSW (400–800 ms), event-related potentials (ERPs) method was applied to depict the neural substrates on prudent and impulsive consumers’ behaviors within various states of promotion. Promotion types include the pure price promotion and the mixed promotion (a mixture of a charitable donation and a discount). Behaviorally, consumers response more quickly in the pure price promotion condition and they express a preference for the mixed promotion. More importantly, a larger FNSW emerged in the impulsive consumers than the prudent, suggesting that the former might tend to control their eagerness to consume hedonic items. Compared with the price promotion as the worse option, the mixed promotion as the better option caused more perceptual conflict, leading to an increase in N2 amplitude. It suggests that consumers incline to reject the worse offers. These results also reveal that people primarily have to search negative promotion information by their insight and subsequently impulsive consumers inhibit the responses to the promotion information. The method of ERPs and FNSW should be helpful for marketing researchers and professionals on hedonic consumption and sales promotion.